Samsung's decision to restrict wifi 5Ghz and 6Ghz channels based on region

[Quazi Haque]

It basically applies to all Samsung devices.

Samsung has decided to region lock the wifi 5GHz and 6Ghz channels for all of their devices. The problem with that is if you bought your wifi router from a different region than the one you live in having different wifi channels, Samsung can't see the 5Ghz and 6Ghz SSIDs. They presumable use the mobile network to identify the region and then impose the restrictions on the wifi channels.

Phones from other manufacturers (Apple, OnePlus, Google, Huawei etc) don't have this restriction imposed. I'm really not sure why Samsung chose to do so. Its hardware supports all bands. The way to test this is if you put your Samsung phone/tablet in airplane mode, restart your phone and then turn only wifi on - you'll see the 5Ghz and 6Ghz SSIDs and can connect to them just fine. Then you can turn airplane mode off, the SSIDs will stay until you go out of range or turn on/off wifi and then they won't show.

I just bought TP-link Deco XE75 mesh routers with wifi 6e from the US - I live in Bangladesh. These routers don't allow for manually changing the channels. So none of the Samsung phones and tablets in my house (6 of them - S24 Ultra, S22 Ultra, S21 Ultra, Flip 5, A73, Tab S9 FE) can see the 5GHz and 6GHz SSIDs. I checked the method above to confirm my S24 Ultra can see and connect to 5GHz and 6GHz the SSIDs just fine when following the procedure, but they'll disappear if I turn off wifi and then turn it back on. 

Every other non-Samsung device in my house can see 5Ghz/6Ghz SSIDs just fine as per their specifications. It's just the Samsung devices that have the issue.

If no other big brands do it, why does Samsung have to do it? I really don't understand. Because of this, I can't enjoy wifi 6e or even 5 Ghz wifi on any of our Samsung devices although their hardware are capable to do so.

I really wish they would come to their senses and remove this unnecessary software limitation.

[internet use only]

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[Fazal Mahmud Hassan]

i have been facing the same issue. My s24u does not support the lower 5ghz channels. The issue is you can only use the 160mhz channel width for the full 2400mbps linkspeed on wifi 6 on the lower channels only. All my other devices at home support the lower channel and get the full use of the 160mh channel width. However, my s24u does not see the wifi 5ghz if the router is set to that channel. The phone only picks up the 2.4 ghz network. For this, I had to force my router to use the higher channels, this led me to disable 160mhz width and switch back to 80mhz. This cut down my wifi bandwidth to half. Very dissapointing at Samsung. 

[internet use only]

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[Alan-Avella]

I appreciate tour interest.  Yes that is what we do.  We evaluate Tech equipment.  So far we've used 5 or 6 wifi7 adapters and all of them see my unifi and Omada wifi 7 signals and even MLO works great... all my equipment works great with the 6 GHz bands... even old computers with new wifi7 adapters... too sad the only one that does not is my s24 ultra.  I've had to exclude it from all my videos and of course made me stop bragging about having the "best phone available"  If you have any suggestions they're welcome.  So far nothing has worked for us.  Well we want to stay in the users' perspective and not having to reflash devices, root or deep modifications.  This is a topic to which we have dedicated many months.

[internet use only]

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[mujju76]

I have the same phone s24ultra , same router XE 75 tplink and same problem in pakistan. Were you able to find a solution ???

[J_Silva]

Hello. There's no official solution, as I guess it is a matter of compliance. In my case, I followed the OP workaround and it works, although I have to repeat the procedure each time I disconnect, for whatever reason, from my 6E network. 

[internet use only]

At last I stepped up the game LEVEL 10🌟  and now officially running WiFi 7 🎉 6GHz at 320Mhz 

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[Widoon]

Same issue. .   Meta quest 3 see 6ghz and my computer but s24 ultra doesn't.  Funny thing that after updating to one ui 7 it started to see but it stopped after reconnecting. Oh samsung is so right...

[internet use only]

So u tryin to connect via hotspot ?